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Strung Together

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worn

It’s nice to find a strand of hair on one of your handknits, or a golden curlicue between the pages of a book. A remembrance of the moment a (beloved?) human or pet came near. Or maybe it was just you, a few hours or years younger. Then there’s the superstition that knitting a strand of a person’s hair into your stitches will bind them to you. If you’ve ever done this by mistake, you’ll know how difficult it is to unbind that hair! I imagine these objects must be covered in the Dust of human consciousness (or “the ply of human life” as Woolf called it).

Not forgetting, of course, that the fibers we work were themselves once hairs on a creature. And those hairs are probably made up of strings and loops. And that each loop is a solid memory, and knitting is a bit like a time machine: it’s larger on the inside, and in a few minutes you can undo a whole day. It’s like loosening the fabric of space & time… It’s brilliant!

25th May, 2011  // Life // tags: , , .

How My Knowledge of Fiber Saved My Life

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Last night I was sitting on the sofa by a lovely roaring fire, typing away at my blog post. My boyfriend had gone down to the pub with his friend, and I was all alone in the small Welsh cottage. As I got up to get myself a mug of tea, I glanced at the woodburner and noticed that the candle that had been left on top of it (note use of passive) looked a bit lopsided, so I thought I’d better take it off there and put it to one side. The saucer was full of hot melted wax though, so it was rather tricky to do, and I noticed that the flames were licking away at that side of the burner, making it even hotter. Not knowing a whole lot about fires, I opened the woodburner door to try to rearrange the logs. Woosh! The flames licked out of the hinge and one side of the woodburner caught fire. It finally clicked that there was hot hot wax dripping down that entire side of the woodburner. In a few brief moments, many thoughts ran through my head:

– My God, the fire is outside the woodburner.
– Maybe if I leave it, it’ll just burn up.
– I can’t call my boyfriend.
– How am I going to tell him I burnt his house down?

(read more…)

10th November, 2008  // Yarn // tags: , , , , .

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